


It's Just A Shirt

by mikaylamazing



Category: Andi Mack (TV)
Genre: 3x15, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It, Jealous T. J. Kippen, M/M, Miscommunication, Oblivious Cyrus Goodman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 13:05:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19394737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikaylamazing/pseuds/mikaylamazing
Summary: Another, more angsty conclusion to 3x15, per anon's request. In which TJ sees Jonah wearing the shirt.





	It's Just A Shirt

**Author's Note:**

> ahhhhhh this ended up longer than I anticipated, enjoy!

It’s been a couple days since TJ has heard from Cyrus. Like at all. If he thought Cyrus had been avoiding him before, he has no clue what to think now. To say that they’ve been having a bit of a rough patch is putting it lightly. And to think, TJ didn’t even really think anything was wrong until two days ago, when he tried to invite Cyrus to hang out with him and Kira together. He thought it would be a great idea, the three of them doing something together, but almost as soon as he had suggested it, Cyrus shot it down. Sure, Kira didn’t seem super enthused at the notion, but TJ is sure it would’ve worked out in the end if Cyrus had just given it a chance.

TJ looks down at this phone screen again; probably the hundredth time within the hour. Still no new messages from Cyrus. Just one from Kira he’s been ignoring all day. The last message from Cyrus had been telling TJ to come see him. He’d give anything to have that today. Instead, it’s 21 messages sent from TJ, and nothing, not even a read notification, from Cyrus’s end. If he’s trying to avoid TJ, he’s really committed to it, but if he’s not-

TJ is worried to say the least, and it really would be saying the least. TJ is pretty sure he’s never worried about a single person this much before in his entire life, and he’s not even sure he has a real reason to be worried. None of Cyrus’s friends seem concerned, so why can’t TJ just calm down already? If he’s being avoided, it’s probably something he did, and so he’d really have no right to be worried anyway.

TJ continues to worry well into the night, still not having responded to Kira even when she sent him second and third messages, both comprised of nothing but question marks. TJ can understand that feeling. He goes to sleep thinking up ways to fix something he had no idea was even broken.

In the morning, before school, TJ considers asking Buffy if anything’s wrong. By the time he’s out the front door, he’s decided he definitely has to ask as soon as possible. So he starts running. TJ realizes, belatedly, that it doesn’t matter how early he is if Buffy isn’t at school yet. He looks at his phone, and sees that he is not only early, he’s earlier than he’s ever been to school before. He resigns himself to sitting outside, keeping his eyes peeled, not stopping for even a moment. When he spots Buffy approaching, he immediately breaks into a sprint.

“Buffy! Buffy, wait!” She turns to look at him, but it seems more than a little reluctant.

“What do you want, TJ?” Buffy asks, sounding a lot like she used to when she hated TJ and everything about him.

“I was just wondering if you’ve heard from Cyrus. He hasn’t been responding to anything I say, and I can never find him after school. Is he okay?”

“Cyrus is grounded,” she responds, like he’s failing to understand something fairly simple. Which, maybe he is, although he has thought about this for at least a few hours and he’s pretty sure that if he could, he would’ve figured it out by now.

“Why is he grounded?”

“He didn’t tell you? We got in trouble for giving away the clothes we got because it didn’t belong to us. We all have to do community service,” she takes a slight pause before going on “So I guess it’s a good thing you didn’t come.” TJ is smart enough to sense the bitterness in her voice, but he still can’t figure out why she’s so annoyed with him, specifically. It doesn’t feel good. He tries one more time.

“So do you know where he is?” Buffy looks at him then away.

“No.” She walks away, leaving TJ feeling like he’s been lied to.

TJ begins to lose hope that he’ll see Cyrus at all today. He sits alone at lunch, and it’s like he’s done something wrong again, like Cyrus is mad at him again, except this time he won’t even admit it, which is about ten times worse. And on top of that, TJ still has no idea what’s wrong. He pokes at the food on his tray, his appetite gone.

To make matters worse, Kira comes to sit with him, as if his entire demeanor doesn’t say ‘leave me alone’. She tries talking to him and it only serves to further dampen his mood when he realizes he can barely be bothered to listen to her. She might as well be talking to a brick wall. He’s slumped in his seat, clearly uninterested, until he sees a boy walking past his table.

TJ sees his shirt first.

“Hey, Jonah!” TJ says, gritting his teeth in what he hopes isn’t an obviously fake smile. Kira turns around in her seat, both of them eyeing him.

“Hey, TJ?” Jonah responds, confused sounding but coming closer while maintaining a little distance. TJ understands, they’re not exactly friends despite patching up their issues from years ago, but he can also just barely see beyond his own anger and jealousy. _It’s not the shirt. It can’t be,_ he thinks to himself. There’s one way to find out for sure.

“That’s a nice shirt,” TJ says. He’s mostly sincere, but for anyone who knows him, it would be easy to detect the tension in his voice. Jonah, however, is so oblivious, it’s almost comedic.

“Thanks!” he says enthusiastically, looking down at the shirt and then back up, smiling at TJ. He can barely tolerate it.

“Where’d you get it?” TJ asks, not even going for nonchalant at this point. He knows that Jonah finally senses that something is wrong because his smile drops from his face in a second flat. TJ is still annoyed.

“Uh, Cyrus gave it to me at sale giveaway illegal thing.” Jonah is obviously getting more wary as time goes on, but TJ still can’t stop himself from being absolutely insufferable and rude, for really no reason at all. Jonah has nothing to do with this after all, he just got inconveniently caught in the middle of it. TJ chances a look over at Kira as she looks between both of them, connecting points together. TJ doesn’t know what her conclusion is.

“It’s pretty cool,” TJ says, decidedly aggressive because he has nowhere else for his emotions to go.

“Yeah… oh, hey Andi!” Jonah says, looking off to the other side of the cafeteria and running in the same direction. When TJ turns, Andi is nowhere to be seen.

“So… what was all that about?” Kira asks. Judging by her voice, she already knows. TJ plays dumb anyway.

“Nothing. What, I can’t compliment someone’s shirt?” he asks irritably, crossing his arms over his chest. She only raises an eyebrow, not saying a word. TJ sits uncomfortably for the rest of lunch.

TJ goes through the rest of the school day, still nothing but radio silence from Cyrus. He feels so bad, that he can’t even be bothered to make it to basketball practice, telling his coach that he feels sick. He’s not even lying about it. He starts walking home, kicking at every rock he comes across on the sidewalk when he spots a familiar figure, aimlessly wander at the very edge of the park. He looks stressed, but isn’t doing anything, just hovering, looking into the distance and then back again nervously, until he sees TJ standing there and staring at him. He’s about to make a run for it, TJ can tell, like an animal spooked in the wild. TJ doesn’t even remember walking towards him, like his body was possessed and then made to forget the whole thing because suddenly he’s right in front the boy and has no idea what to say.

“Cyrus,” is the extent of TJ’s thoughts, and it’s all that spills from his mouth. TJ spent his entire day thinking and wishing and wanting, just for Cyrus to speak to him, but now that he has the opportunity, he’s drawing blank after blank. He feels a little like he can’t breathe, but he knows that’s just his body overreacting.

“I know you said that you weren’t avoiding me, but I’m starting to think that was a lie.” TJ says it with what must be borrowed confidence because he knows he doesn’t have any of that inside himself right now. Cyrus blinks, looking away and tugging at the hem of his shirt. He sighs, meeting TJ’s eyes, looking tired and resigned.

“I have to go home. I’m grounded,” is all he says, but he hasn’t turned to walk away. He’s just standing there, stock-still, but now his eyes are wandering, looking anywhere but TJ’s face.

“Yeah, thanks for telling me about that by the way.” TJ knows he’s sounding more aggressive than usual, but he can’t figure out how to dial it back. All of his emotions are on thin ice, and some of them are gracelessly crashing through. Cyrus flinches slightly at the harshness in his voice before composing his features.

“I don’t have to tell you absolutely everything that’s going on in my life.”

“No, but it would be nice if you felt like you could.” Cyrus’s eyes widen in what TJ is going to call disbelief, huffing out a breath before coming back with “Yeah, well, same.”

It isn’t much in terms of a scathing rebuttal, but it’s enough to bring the simmer of TJ’s feelings back to a boil.

“I literally tell you everything. You’re the _only_ person I tell everything!” TJ now realizes he’s yelling in a public park, and maybe it’s not the best look, but his exasperation over what’s happening steamrolls right over any sense he has left.

“I guess things regarding people named Kira are just conveniently excluded from the meaning of ‘everything’ then,” Cyrus mutters under his breath. TJ can barely hear him, but he can make out the bitterness in his voice that TJ is so used to hearing in his own.

“What are you even saying?”

“I’m saying that if you like Kira, or if you’re in a relationship with her that you should be able to tell me about it if we’re as close as you say we are.”

“I’m literally not either of those things! Why don’t you just believe me?” TJ is really reaching his rope’s end with this argument. How was he supposed to make it clear that he didn’t want anything to do with Kira romantically without making it way _too_ clear?

“Maybe you’re just not very convincing when you’re spending all your time with her.”

“Yeah, well I wanna be spending it with you.” _That’s it_ , TJ thinks. That’s the slip. He isn’t sure how he was planning for that to come across, but there’s no doubt about the message it sends. He couldn’t have made his feelings any clearer to Cyrus. Except apparently, he could because Cyrus still sounds mad and annoyed.

“Sure, that’s why you stayed at the park instead of coming to see me.” Cyrus’s entire face is flushed with blood, and it’s taking every one of TJ’s brain cells to try to figure out which one of his emotions is doing that.

“Clearly me going didn’t matter very much to you, considering the second I didn’t show up you gave my shirt to _Jonah._ ” TJ doesn’t mean to add the extra venom to Jonah’s name. Again, he knows he’s just an innocent bystander in all of this, but he can’t help the wave of jealousy that overcomes him. And now he knows that’s exactly what he sounds like. Cyrus huffs an annoyed breath, but actually looks a little embarrassed as opposed to just pure anger.

“It wasn’t _your_ shirt. It wasn’t anyone’s.”

“You asked me, specifically-”

“Why are you so mad about a shirt? It’s just a shirt.” TJ wants to argue against that. It’s not _just_ a shirt. Well, it is, but it’s not. It’s not about the shirt, it’s about the principle, or whatever.

“It’s not about the shirt!”

“Then what is it about?”

“How I _feel_ about the shirt!” And now he sounds stupid, and he knows he’ll continue to do so until he admits what’s actually going on. And that isn’t going to happen. Things are already going downhill as it is, he doesn’t need to accelerate the process.

“Well, sorry. I didn’t realize the shirt was to you. It didn’t seem that important when you were with Kira, having a great time on the swings,” Cyrus says scathingly, slamming his mouth closed right after. Like he didn’t mean to say it out loud. Things start moving a lot faster.

“How did you know about that?” TJ asks, suddenly split between feeling intrigued and feeling guilty. He didn’t even _want_ to go on the swings, tried to convince Kira to do anything else.

“I was gonna come give you the shirt, fyi,” Cyrus says, and it makes TJ feel even worse somehow.

“So why didn’t you?”

“I didn’t wanna interrupt you and Kira.”

“You wouldn’t have been interrupting anything.” Cyrus looks annoyed again, and at this rate, TJ doesn’t think he’s ever gonna see him unannoyed.

“Listen, just admit that you like her, and we can move on from this. I swear I won’t tell, though I doubt it’d be a big issue for her,” Cyrus says, trailing off like he doesn’t want TJ to hear the end of his statement. TJ isn’t sure if the jealousy he’s hearing is truly there or just all in his head because it’s what he wants to hear. He thinks about the situation for a second; how easy it would be to just say yes to liking the pretty, sporty girl who, by most standards, should be ‘perfect’ for him, even if it’s not true. He and Cyrus would stop arguing, but how long would it take for a new one to start? It would keep going on like this: never seeing each other, arguing about never seeing each other, until they literally just don’t see each other. Ever again. TJ just got Cyrus back. He’s not ready to lose him again. So he decides right then and there.

“I can’t.” It’s all he can say. For the first time this entire conversation, he’s looking at the ground.

“Well then we’re back to square one, and honestly I’m not about to-”

“I can’t because I like _you_!” They’re both silent save for TJ’s labored breathing. Seeing Cyrus’s slack-jawed expression makes TJ clench his. Cyrus quickly closes his mouth as well.

“What?” Cyrus asks. TJ is fairly certain that Cyrus heard him considering TJ just screamed his confession to the entire park, but he figures reiteration won’t hurt him any more than he already is.

“I can’t admit that I like Kira because I like you. A lot.” TJ might have just made everything awkward beyond repair, but nobody can ever say he wasn’t 100% honest. The second time feels like a weight off of his chest, easier to accept now that it’s out in the open, so he keeps going.

“And I should’ve said something earlier because we would’ve been able to avoid all of this in the first place, but I was just so scared that you wouldn’t wanna talk to me anymore, which, I guess wasn’t too different from what actually ended up happening, but I still-”

Cyrus grabs his hand and TJ stops talking immediately focusing in on the way their fingers are clumsily tangling together.

“You’re thinking about this way too much.”

“Well can you blame me?” TJ isn’t really sure what’s happening. He’s glad they’re not yelling at each other anymore, but the territory they’re in is murky. He has no idea what Cyrus is thinking or feeling. His heart is pounding. Cyrus shakes his head a little.

“No. And to be fair I haven’t been much better.” When Cyrus leans in and his lips brush against TJ’s cheek, TJ is pretty sure he stops breathing for a few seconds, his eyes wider than they’ve ever been. Cyrus giggles a little awkward laugh before stepping back, TJ’s arm automatically reaching out for him.

“Uh, I’m still grounded. I was serious about that. So I should probably get home before my parents think they should give me a stern talking to about responsibility.” TJ laughs, staring at the dark red blush on Cyrus’s cheeks that likely matches his own.

“Okay. But I’ll see you tomorrow at lunch?” TJ asks, hopeful but still a little uncertain.

“Absolutely,” Cyrus nods as they smile at each other.

TJ thinks things are about to get a lot easier. Right after they talk about everything, of course.

TJ sighs again, but there’s nothing in the world that could take the smile off his face.


End file.
